Ableword PDF Editor Review: Freeware to edit word and PDF files on PC

Last updated on: December 15, 2016

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OpenOffice Impress is an impressive and free software to edit PDF files but it is part of OpenOffice suite. You can use it only if you’ve installed the full Apache office suite on your PC. There are a lot of free applications that allow you to modify document files and the latest one is Ableword. Developed by R. Richardson, Ableword is a freeware pdf editor that will run on Windows 7, 8, XP or 8.1 OS running PC or laptop. Below is a complete review of this software.

Ableword freeware editor review and features

Setup: Visit ableword.net and download the setup file. Run the installer and follow the instructions. During installation, you’ll see an option to associate doc and Docx files with this application. Select this option if you want Ableword to open Microsoft word document files. This application takes just 14 MB space on HDD.

First look: Ableword has Microsoft Word 2013 like UX. It has a menu based navigation system, a toolbar and plenty of useful utilities.

As of now, Ableword can be used to open and create files in Docx, doc, pdf, HTML, RTF and text formats. It has a spell and word count checker tool. This application supports tables. Thus, you can easily add, merge, modify tables or split, edit its cell in supported files. Ableword features a pdf text importer tool. If you’re interested to read only the text content of a pdf document, use this utility.

Ableword allows you to print or fax documents. It includes a page setup utility with which, you can modify margin, width, height, columns, borders of open files. To make your pdf more readable and attractive, you change the text font, size, position in Ableword. You can also add a background or foreground color to the text. Ableword has a utility to modify images, frame layout, and its dimensions. It has a search tool. Thus, you can easily find a specific text or sentence in a document file.

Testing: I downloaded and opened en eight-page Business intelligence PDF document published on the official website of one of the top US University. The file had lots of images, tables, and advanced formatting. Ableword was able to open the file without modifying the layout of the text content or affecting the quality of pictures. I was successful in editing table cells and changing the dimension of images.

Must Read: Microsoft Office is free for Android, IOS tablets, and phones

Final thoughts: Download Ableword if you need a fast light-weight PDF, doc and HTML page editor. This software is fast, easy to use and understand. You can use this freeware to convert document files from one format to the other. The only limitation of Ableword is that its PDF editing features are limited. It doesn’t have a utility to combine, annotate PDF files or add digital signatures to files. To install this software, enter ableword.net in the address field of your browser and hit return key of your keyboard.

1 COMMENT

N. Davis

I’ve tried to track down R. Richardson (Ableword document and PDF editor) to thank him/her for their excellent hard work and can’t find a trace of them anywhere. I would even donate to this one. Saved me on a “pro” PDF editor I used to use on an earlier computer. If you know anything about them or how to say thanks to them, I’d like to hear about it.

I have 3 kinds of real time scanners running, anti-malware, anti-virus, and a shell that checks those two for “misses” and I didn’t have a peep out of them about download or install ableword. If I land on softonic.com, or cnet download all my security software has fits about viruses and malware, without even clicking a download button. If I do click on those sites, I really have to struggle to get anything. My security software is nicer to the torrent sites than those two download sites. And every time I’ve downloaded anything from those two, if I made it on to my computer and got the install to work, they are always loaded with “pre-programs” that if you aren’t extremely careful you can load on to your computer unaware. Always best to try to find the source site if you find something on those two that you want to try.